Long before Warhammer was a glimmer in Bryan Ansell’s eye, nerds were making up rules to refight their favorite battles from fantasy literature, putting armies of elves, orcs, goblins, and dwarves at the foundation of the genre. A lot of games have been built on those foundations, of course, and every new wargame faces the challenge of incorporating those genre standards in ways that feel true to their history and fan expectations, while still giving them a distinctive identity. Corvus Belli’s skirmish wargame Warcrow is about to get its first dwarf army, the forces of Mounthaven, and it’s a fascinating take on the bearded grumblers that is at once true to their roots, and something totally new.
Most fantasy dwarves are descended from Tolkien’s ideas – proud isolationists who dwell in secluded kingdoms mined into mountains, master smiths with an unhealthy lust for treasure, and long memories that never forget a grudge. Tolkien took a lot of his ideas from Norse and Germanic mythology: the Sons of Ivaldi who crafted magical gifts for the gods of Asgard; Fáfnir, a dwarf so sick with treasure-lust he became a dragon; the subterranean Svartalfheim where the Dvergar dwell. Mounthaven looks much further afield for inspiration – to East Asia.
These aren’t just dwarves in kimonos wielding katanas, of course – the inspiration is subtle in places, overt in others. Publisher Corvus Belli has found the common ground between classic dwarf lore, and European ideas of historical East Asia, and alloyed them together.
An isolated people, with an ancient culture, and technology well in advance of the rest of the world – that could equally describe the dwarves of Mounthaven, or China from the perspective of a 15th century European. And an ancient, continuous culture is key to the lore of Mounthaven.
Warcrow takes place on the planet Lindwurm. Magic in Lindwurm originates from orichalcum, a mysterious metal that resonates with the harmonies of the celestial bodies. When the comet Warcrow passes close to the planet the effects of orichalcum amplify, and the world enters an age of turmoil as great power rises to the surface and the nations of the world wage war for dominance.
The game is set during one such age of strife – an age that the dwarves of Mounthaven have long prepared for. They’ve got a plan – a Master Plan, with capital letters and everything – laid down by the ancestors and carefully refined by each generation.
Hrodreiks, Thirteenth Executor of the Master Plan is a playable character on the tabletop – in fact, you’ll find him in the Mounthaven Action Pack. His rules are a great example of how Mounthaven takes the themes of prescient planning and meticulous execution and turns them into a distinctive playstyle for the army.
The basic stats of Mounthaven’s units are what you’d expect for dwarves in a wargame – durable but slow. Support characters like Hrodreiks prevent the enemy from capitalizing on that weakness, with meticulous planning manifesting as preternatural battlefield awareness.
Hrodreiks has two passive support abilities that are always active. First, he disarms all enemy Scouts and Ambushers that try and deploy outside your opponent’s deployment zone, penalising them for daring to encroach on Mounthaven’s sovereign territory. And he’s ‘Prepared for the worst’ – when one of your units dies, he can immediately refresh another unit and send it charging into the fight. Under his gaze, Mounthaven forces are relentless.
Hrodreiks can even ‘Guide Destiny’ at the start of the turn, which lets you decide which company activates first. It’s a very dwarf-coded form of control gameplay: you may not be able to outmaneuver your opponent, but you can dictate the terms of the engagement as carefully as a mine overseer plotting the route into a seam of rich ore.
Despite his priestly robes and suite of support abilities, Hrodreiks isn’t actually a magic user in game terms; that would be the Folder. And no, this isn’t heresy against traditional dwarf lore – it’s actually a great example of how Mounthaven takes traditional dwarf ideas in new directions.
In Lindwurm, magic comes from the metal known as orichalcum: most spellcasters channel the magical field it generates across the planet as a whole. Dwarves are metalcrafters beyond compare, and they work directly with orichalcum to empower their artefacts. Folders are among the most subtle orichalcum workers, able to bend and shape delicate sheets of the metal into magical origami. By forming it into the likeness of an animal, they can channel its spirit to enhance their allies.
The Japanese influence here is obvious – not just in the origami, but in the animist spirituality – but this is also a deep cut reference to the original dwarf smiths of Norse legend, the Sons of Yvaldi. Challenged by Loki to make the best possible gifts for the gods of Asgard, these dwarfs created three works of wonder, one of which was Skithblathnir, a longboat that could fold away like a cloth when not needed.
In game terms, the Folder can ‘Summon the spirit of the orichalcum’ and enhance an allied unit with either The Owl or The Bear spirit. The Bear spirit makes them stronger and able to drive back enemy units further when they win combat, a great set of tools for bullying the enemy off objectives. The Owl spirit is defensive, letting them reposition out of combat and even fly across the battlefield.
A lot of modern fantasy – Warhammer and Warcraft particularly – takes the idea that dwarfs are master metallurgists and magical smiths and gives them blackpowder weaponry and steampunk contraptions. The dwarves of Mounthaven are, in some ways, a lot purer – their inventions work by harnessing the innate magic of metal, like the cunning dwarven smiths who forged Thor’s hammer Mjolnir or Odin’s spear Gungnir. It’s what you want in a dwarf army, really – a timeless design animated by bold new ideas.
You can find much more lore about Mounthaven and the world of Lindwurm in the gorgeous hardback Warcrow rulebook. If you just want to leap into the game, the rules you need to play are free to download from the Warcrow website, while the free Corvusphere web app has the full unit rules for every army. The Mounthaven Action Pack is currently available for pre-order, and contains all the models you need to start playing.
Source: Wargamer
